


Baby, Snap Out of It

by ThisIsJuli



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Past Brainwashing, Red Room, Slow Build, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:44:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisIsJuli/pseuds/ThisIsJuli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dainty, little Hana could not have survived the Red Room, Natalia decides. She is breakable, and she will be broken. Natalia could not afford to let herself be affected by this girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Classic Soulmate AU: first words your soulmates say are written on your skin. In my version, everyone has two: a platonic and a romantic.

They kept her in the control room for an entire week. She was much older than the girls they usually selected to join the academy. It took much longer, therefore, for them to wipe her mind of her childhood memories and replace it with the classic Red Room mantra:

_You have always loved ballet._

_You trained hard to be accepted into this program._

_You love your country._

_You would do anything for your country._

_You would kill for your country–_

And so on.

She must have been chosen for a reason. Perhaps she belonged to a prestigious family gone awry, or she had displayed a certain aptitude for violence even at her young age. Or maybe it was simply because she was already beautiful: wispy blonde hair with glacier blue eyes and prominent cheekbones. She was hardly more than a child, but she could easily bring a full-grown man to his knees with the right smile. Right now her eyes were dazed, absorbing her surroundings in mute shock.

Natalia, as one of the older girls, was assigned to give her the grand tour of her new, inescapable home.

"Nice to meet you, Hana," she said, reaching automatically to shake the younger girl's hand. Hana's little palm weakly squeezed her own, palms slick with sweat. That was strange: she was just released from the control room, its impossible her old self was already breaking through—

"And you, Miss Natalia." Gentle, comforting warmth spread up her arm, settling above her shoulder blade. The words were long gone, but Natalia remembered them well.

She did not freeze. She did not blink. Natalia simply smiled, dropped the girl's hand, and finished the tour. She never spoke to Hana again.

It was better this way, she thinks. Hana will not survive the Red Room. She is made of the finest glass, and glass will shatter under pressure. Hana would not make it to graduation.

Soulmates are for children. Natalia could not afford to be a child.

Two years later, Natalia defects to S.H.I.E.L.D., and tries not to think of small, un-calloused palms and dazed, glacier-blue eyes. When asked, she tells them that her platonic soulmate is dead, because she probably is. Weak, dainty Hana could not have survived the horrors of the Red Room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They catch up to her at a truck stop 100 miles east of the mission.

They catch up to her at a truck stop diner 100 miles east of the mission. She's been sleeping in the hotwired truck, for 30 minutes at a time before driving again. Hana is exhausted and high strung. She exhales heavily, dropping her tense shoulders. Hana doesn't notice the men until it is too late to leave the diner without suspicion. She’s so tired, but she needs to keep moving. She can’t go back there. She has two knives hidden in her sleeves, both no longer than her hands. They press into her wrist, a soothing presence.  Her shoulders tense up again, and her eyes flicker up and find her followers.

It's Peter, and two thugs she doesn't recognize. She trusted him even less than the other handlers: he smiled particularly sharp while watching her dance.

One of the final patrons of the small, dilapidated diner leaves. She sips her oversweet tea. Peter tenses himself to strike. He is confident in himself, and his arrogance makes him obvious. The last occupied booth would have to fend for themselves, because this fight wouldn’t wait any longer. She launches herself off and above her chair, her right knife dropping out of her sleeve and into her palm. He snarls an order at her, something that is supposed to make her freeze, but it is meaningless over the uproar of the diner and the furious drum of her own heart.

A bullet clips her waist, and she realizes: this is not a retrieve mission. This is a kill mission.

The game is up. _They know._ A brainwashed girl would not stage a failed mission to slip away from her handlers.

She twists to kick Peter in the jaw, and he takes the opportunity to slam his fist into her new bullet wound. Her breath comes out in a hiss, and her vision blurs for a moment, and then it becomes scarily clear. In a daze, she thrusts her final knife into his side. The placement is off, so it won’t be fatal, but she is well trained and it will keep him down for a while.

When she turns to assess Peter's thugs, the world spins and melts like watercolors, and they are not there. Instead, she finds the final four civilians–not civilians, it turns out–performing cleanup duty.

The shorter of the blondes doesn’t even pretend to help, his eyes never moving from her. She had a feeling that he had been watching her from the moment she had walked in. The other three men were, undoubtedly, soldiers. This man was not. He worked alone, she could tell. Looking at him made the scar on her left shoulder itch. Hana blinks, and the world darkens fractionally. She's fading, and quickly. She needs to get out of here. She takes a step toward the door, and the blonde mirrors her actions.

"Who are you?" He asks, his voice carefully and deliberately accentless.

"I am no one," She hisses back. His eyes narrow, but he doesn't seem all that surprised by her answer.

Another one of the men approaches her, hands up in a pacifying gesture. The short blonde one warns “Sam” to not get too close to her. She is a wounded animal, and he isn’t sure how she will react.

"Look, we don't want to hurt you. Obviously the bad guys are shooting at you too," He waves a hand toward her wound. Her lips curl upward in a snarl. He should not be able to tell she is hurt.

"She's coming with us," The blonde fighter said brusquely. The larger blonde tried to protest, but stopped once the other started gesturing rapidly with his hands, forming shapes that must have some kind of higher meaning. He quieted.

 A tranq gun appears in the smaller blonde's hand. Hana snarls, and lunges towards him, but she is too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first attempt at a fight scene, so I hope it turned out all right... I'm thinking of adding an interlude where it explains how Hana fakes dying in her mission, but I'm not sure I could pull it off!
> 
> It was soooo difficult writing about Steve and Clint without saying their names haha


	3. Interlude

Once Hana is dropped off at the Med Bay, Clint disappears to find Natasha. The moment he saw this girl, _he knows_ that this girl is connected to Natasha. Seeing her, first on a security photo then in the diner, made his chest ache, like he couldn’t breathe.

She finds him first, a frown marring her features. She could feel his distress the moment the quinjet landed at the tower: it made her hip burn.

He says nothing, just motions for her to follow him.

He takes her to Hana's cot in the Med Bay. First, all she notices is the hair. It’s long and blonde, matted with blood and dirt. Next she sees the scars– scars from years and years of rough training. Then, she puts two and two together. She has never seen hair that blonde, has never seen cheekbones like that, except…

Natasha reacts like a hurricane: first, just a shuttered breath, then a flurry of impossible motion. In seconds she has removed the IV and pulse monitor from the frail girl. The machines beep shrilly, and the medical assistants protest for a moment before realizing that they were facing against the Black Widow. She ignores them, and ignores Clint's raised eyebrows too. Sure, he _knew,_ but he didn’t expect this. He could count on one hand the times he has witnessed Natasha lose her cool.

"Go get Banner," She snaps at him, and carefully lifts Hana into her arms. Despite her muscles, Hana is as light as a feather. The Red Room does not have a protein plan, nor do they particularly care that their girls were healthy: they just had to be strong.

She reaches her personal apartment in minutes, and Jarvis opens the doors for her. She places Hana gently on the spare bed. She's lost a lot of blood, but her heartbeat and breathing is steady. This isn't fatal.

Part of her mind is smooth and analytical: _we don’t know what she is like now, this might be a trick, she might wake up and try to kill us all, this could be a trap_

And the other part just cried: _Hana hana hana I’m so_ sorry _I left you I shouldn’t have left you–_

Banner arrives, Rogers on his heels.

"Romanoff, are you crazy? Clint brings an _unknown hostile_ into the avengers tower, and then you bring her into the residence floors! We don't even know who she is–"

"Her name is Hana," Natasha interrupted, voice thick. Rogers doesn’t notice.

“No offense, Romanoff, but just because she is your friend doesn’t mean that I trust her enough to be–”

"She is..." Natasha trails off, absentmindedly stretching her shirt to reveal her shoulder, and the barely visible writing. It had been burned and sliced and bruised, but the words were still there. It is impossible to completely erase a soulmark.

Steve softened. "I didn't know you had a platonic soulmate…"

"I thought she was gone." Steve’s eyebrows furrow when he thinks of when he lost Bucky. He knows that Natasha’s story cannot possibly be very similar to his, but his heart aches for her anyway. Losing a soulmate hurts like hell.

Natasha hovers behind Bruce as he checks Hana over, and confirms what she already knows. Hana will be fine after rest and a few good meals.

Natasha doesn’t know what she will tell her when she wakes. _I knew we were soulmates but I left you behind because I didn’t think you were strong enough?_ No. _I’ll protect you, even though I didn’t bother last time?_ Even worse. Clint touches her arm, and she retreats back to his apartment to plan her next move, leaving Rogers and Barnes in her apartment to guard Hana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure how to write the mission, so that might someday become a oneshot. I hope I did Natasha justice in this! At least, how I view Natasha.


	4. Welcome to New York

Hana’s eyes fluttered open. She was surrounded by clouds. Her nose was pressed into one. They were impossibly soft and fluffy under her cheek, with the gentle smell of clean linen... pillows? She rolled to face the room around her. Still, she was surrounded by a sea of white. White sheets, white walls, white carpet. She couldn't remember the last time she was so comfortable. But she had to move. She needed a plan, and she needed a weapon. She needed to get out of here. Wherever ‘here’ was, she wasn’t safe. She would never be safe; she had no place in this world.

From what she could tell, there were no cameras in the room. The room was devoid of knickknacks or shelves that could conceal a camera or listening device. She slid out of the bed, landing on her knees when the room spun with her movement. The carpet was thick and plush, with no signs of mold. This was a wealthy institute, and she was high up, away from precipitation that could leave dampness.

There are hushed voices outside of the door. The voices are urgent, but not arguing. With their tone she can tell they have known each other for a long time, and that they are comfortable with one another.

"We need to be ready for her–"

"–What can we do? No matter what, when she wakes up she's going to be scared, confused, maybe volatile–"

"We have to keep her here, she's Natasha's–"

Hana's blood ran cold. Her vision sharpened. She can't stay here _. She can't–_

She opens the door and lunges at the first person she sees.

It is the blonde, the one who protested them taking her. With his well-built physique, blonde hair, and blue eyes he's the perfect picture of the All-American boy. America is not quite living up to what she expected… land of the brave, land of the free. She is not free, and she is not quite sure about the brave part.

He blocks her first hit, and shouts something at her. She hears nothing, but with his expression he is probably telling her to stop. He looks scared of hurting her. That's a mistake. She’s not going down without a fight.

She goes for another blow. This one lands, and he's left gasping after her palm slams into his throat.

A disembodied voice announces the impending arrival of a Miss Romanoff. She ignores it, and assesses the other man.

He is not like the other one. Dark hair hung in his face, and he watched her with piercing, dangerous eyes. He could stop her. He would not rest until she was down, temporarily or permanently.

No. She couldn't let that happen.

She launches herself off of the coffee table to get the upper hand. He doesn't even stumble, just catches her weight and throws her back off of him. She lands on her feet, but barely. Her head is spinning and her breathing is irregular. She needs to get out of here, she still has a lot of healing left to do. He blocks the next two hits, and yanks her wrist on the second, pulling her weight forward and pinning her arms to her side. His breath is warm on her ear.

"I don't want to fight you, doll." He snaps in Russian, breath slightly elevated. She is hardly a workout for him. Those words should mean something to her, but she can't quite reach it…

"But I can't stay here!" she replies thickly, in the same language. He drops her so fast that she loses her balance, landing face first on the hallway floor.

The front door slams open, and a wet haired redhead bursts in. Hana chokes on her own breath.

"Natalia?" She cries out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels so weird to write about these characters... I've only ever read other people's perceptions of them. Hope you liked it!


	5. Chapter 5

She slowly approaches the girl on the floor, bending in one fluid motion to be on her level. She smiles softly. Hana knows that this is a game. Natalia will be soft and sweet until she assesses Hana’s disposition, then she will strike if necessary.

“I go by Natasha now.” Hana blinks in surprise but doesn’t comment. Her eyes scan the room, looking for clues as to the location of this place.

“We’re in New York City, in the Avengers Tower.” New York City, hmm… and ‘the Avengers Tower?’ She had no idea where that was in the city, or the significance of the place, but Natalia– Natasha now– seemed to think it was secure location, to be talking freely like this.

“Safe?” Hana asks quietly, closing her eyes in exhaustion.

“Safe,” Natasha repeats. “This isn’t the Red Room.” Hana’s eyes snapped open again, and she pushes herself half off the floor.

“Then where…” She trailed off, and didn’t seem to want to continue her sentence, and imagine what new horror she slipped into running away from the last one.

“You got away. You’re free now.” Hana snorted at that. She would never be free. There would always be another group, another organization in the shadows that would snatch her away. She would never have a normal life. She rested her head back on the plush carpet, not removing her eyes from the girl in front of her. Something told her that this girl was important, very important.

They had met on Hana’s first day of the Red Room, and the day in general was fuzzy, but she remembered meeting Natalia well. Her face was compassionless, but her eyes were soft. She knew what was going on. She knew that Hana did not love ballet; she knew that Hana did not train to be accepted to the academy. But after that first day, Natalia never spoke to her again. Hana noticed, however, that Natalia was always close: watching her training with expressionless eyes. Until one day, she didn’t come back from her mission. Missions would only be for a maximum of three months; it would be unwise to let the regime deteriorate from their minds far from the Red Room. When Hana asked they kept her in a control room for an entire week until the question faded into the back of her mind.

“What about them?” She asks Natasha, tilting her head to indicate the two men she knew were behind her, watching. Natasha’s eyes flicker up to look at them, and her lips curl upward in a small but genuine smile.

“They can be trusted,” She says simply, and doesn’t elaborate any further. They inch closer, and Natasha shakes her head minutely. They stop.

She outstretches a hand to Hana, pulling her off the floor. Once on her feet, Hana declines any more help. Natasha eyes her carefully as they make their way over to the sofa, but Hana doesn’t falter. Despite her exhaustion, despite her wound, she is not willing to shut down. She is too scared, Natasha thinks. But no, “scared,” isn’t the right word. Hana is a soldier weary from war; she has seen too much, experienced too much, to rest just yet. Everyone present in Natasha’s apartment knew this feeling too well.

She slumps into the couch, but it is a false relaxation. She is still ready to strike at any moment. Her eyes do not stray from the two men in front of them. The blond man looked confused and sad, though she didn’t know why. He should be angry. She hurt him, and tried to escape. The other man’s expression was much more familiar. He kept his face slack, but he watched her with hard eyes. Yes, that’s better.

Hana doesn’t break eye contact until Natasha gets up off the couch and leaves the room. She returns with bottled water and a protein bar. Hana takes them, inspecting the packaging carefully. It’s just a habit; Hana knows that Natasha was too smart to leave an obvious mistake. She sips slowly, carefully. She knows better than to stuff herself after not eating for a while. This makes the blonde’s eyebrows crease again. She ignores this and peels open the protein bar, tearing it into chunks and chewing carefully.

Between one bite and the next, she was asleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not happy with how this one turned out, but here it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Snap Out of It," by the Arctic Monkeys.  
> This is my first multi-chapter fic, I hope you like it!  
> Some warnings: no romance between Natasha and Hana, chapters are likely to be short, and this won't get too hot and heavy. Please please leave me concrit in the comments, or just say hello! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
